We Will Weep
by My Sharpie Is Green
Summary: I will not see you again, Narcissa, after this night. This war will have claimed one of us before my sentence is through. The Malfoys on the night of June 25, 1995...post OotP.


**A/N: **First off, don't own HP. Now that we've got that out of the way…this is the tiniest bit AU, but it would still work in the Potterverse and in cannon, and it's just a little bit more emotional. Plus, cannon didn't fit into the plotbunny that was attacking me. Inspired by "Gollum's Song" by Emiliana Torrini, especially the lines "_And we will weep/To be so alone/We are lost/We can never go home…"_ (hence the title). Please review, because I have finals on Tuesday and I'm starting to stress…. your reviews, whether good or bad, would be a nice consolation for the hours I'm gonna spend studying. And besides, I've spent a lot of time on this (five hours, with breaks)—I'd like to see what people thought and if it was worth it. Wow, and the award for longest author's note ever goes to…. ME!

**.x. We Will Weep .x.**

When Lucius Malfoy married Narcissa Black, one thing was made very clear: he was a Death Eater, but he could not and would not tell her where he went when he was sent off to do the Dark Lord's bidding. She had, of course, accepted this, with the promise that he had ways of concealing himself if ever the Ministry caught onto his true allegiance. While she had worried moderately over the decades they had been married, serious concern had rarely consumed her, but her fears had pestered her more frequently since the second coming of the Dark Lord. The night of June twenty-fifth, however, she found herself more of a nervous wreck than ever before.

The evening before, a band of Death Eaters had been found in the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry of Magic, and all Narcissa knew was that Lucius had been unaccounted for during the hours the intrusion was said to have taken place. All day long she had paced and shaken, coming close to tears at her emotional peaks. Lucius, whose demeanor was the same as always, paid her panic no mind and Draco, whom she had summoned home out of fear, stayed shut up in his room and didn't say a word to anyone all day. After much fretting she went off to bed with Lucius lying beside her, and for a short while she was comforted. The sleep she drifted into was restless and uneasy; she thrashed in the bed and muttered indiscernible words beneath her breath. She was harassed for hours by visions of a dead Lucius and a dead Draco, and finally awoke with a start. The hands on the handcrafted grandfather clock opposite the mahogany bed (which had been belonged to Lucius' father, Abraxus Malfoy) told her that it was nearly two o'clock in the morning.

She rolled over in the bed after groaning softly, rubbing her eyes with her small hands. She needed sleep. She rested her weary head back down upon the goose feather pillow before opening her eyes again—Lucius was no longer next to her. Narcissa propped herself up with her arms, looking around the room to see if he was standing somewhere, but she was alone. She pulled the silk sheets of the bed back and stood up gingerly, the joints of her knees cracking slightly as they had to support her feather-light weight. Her gait was stiff as she walked to the open doorway; she could hear her bare feet sticking ever so slightly to the hardwood floor. She craned her neck out into the hallway, but the door to the bathroom was open and there was no light inside. It was safe to say that Lucius was elsewhere. She called his name quietly, not raising her voice more than she had to lest she wake Draco from his slumber. Rubbing her eyes again and blinking, she yawned and made her way down two flights of stairs, checking the study on her way down and making a beeline for the kitchen. As she trod the hallway leading to the balcony and staircase, which, in turn, lead to the manor's grand foyer, a door creaked open quietly. "Lucius? Is that you?" Her only response was silence. "I warn you, I am armed," she called, but it was a lie. She had left her wand lying on the nightstand two floors above. "If you are an intruder, leave now and I will not harm you. Continue to force entrance into my home and I will have to attack."

"You are not armed."

Narcissa recognized the voice and rushed to the banister. A lone, cloaked figure was standing in front of the open doorway, silhouetted by the waning light of the moon. His apparel was darker than the inky sky behind him, which was closer to a deep indigo than black and dotted with jovially twinkling, and yet somehow sinisterly foreboding, stars. She smiled slightly. "Lucius," she breathed out in relief. "I worried—"

"Yes, I know," he said curtly. His voice was sharp and unusually cold—it was painfully apparent he did not want to endure her presence longer than was necessary. "I was called into the Ministry. I did not see any urgency in waking you."

She came down the stairs and gently closed the door. As she took her place in front of him, she could not see his face beneath his hood. For her own comfort, she took it off of him, revealing pale skin, white-blonde hair, and cold, gray eyes. "The Ministry? Why so late? Lucius, you are not even an employee—surely Fudge cannot demand your presence at this hour. Wait a bit; go in later. No sooner than daybreak, at any rate."

"Narcissa," he said. His tone was one that would be used if he were speaking with a small child who would not comprehend what he was about to say. He inched closer to her—but not much closer—and put a hand on her colorless arm with a sort of reserved affection. "I am going into the Ministry, and I will not be coming back."

Her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes searched his face for some sort of clue to decipher the information he had just imparted to her. "What do you mean you are not coming back? You are not coming back today? Tonight? I do not understand."

"I am suspected of having some involvement in the utter fiasco at the Ministry yesterday. Fudge and that fool, Scrimgeour, hope to spring a trap for me." He said it as though Narcissa should have been able to glean all of this from his original statement.

"Your involvement? Surely you were not… Surely it is a mistake." He did not answer. "Lucius?"

"I told you, when we were first wed, that I would never and could never impart details of my work for the Death Eaters to you. That is as true today as it was all those years ago."

"Tell me the truth, for once in your life," she said. It was not a plea, but a demand.

Lucius paused, unwilling to give up his supremacy. When he finally spoke, it was slow. "I suspect one of the others leaked the information out, perhaps in hope of a bargain. A lesser sentence, possibly."

"I want you to give me a 'yes' or a 'no', Lucius."

He stared at her. A battle of wills was the last thing that he wanted to fight right now, and he quickly gave in. "Yes."

"You…you know that the Minister is waiting for you with a dozen Dementors in London, and that you are guilty of what he is accusing you of, and yet you are still planning to walk right up to him and shake his hand?"

"Narcissa, it is far too complicated for you to understand."

"Far too complicated for me to understand? I am not a child! Lucius," she said, a hint of pleading in her voice, "stay here. Don't go. You…you have told me before that you can conceal yourself if you truly do not wish to be found. You told me that you could hide if you were found to be an active Death Eater. Do it now that you face prison!"

"Things are different now than I ever imagined they would be when I said that to you."

"Lucius—that is why I agreed to marry you!" There was a sudden harshness to her voice. It had become something of a low growl, and it was clearly warning her husband of what could happen if he did not explain himself well.

"Do not do this right now," he told her, his own voice thoroughly annoyed.

"Do _what, _exactly?"

"Question me. You agreed, when we were married, never to question me."

"And you agreed never to lie, but you have reneged on _that_ promise!" She was shouting now. "I have every right to know why you're practically walking into a cell in Azkaban and writing your name all over the walls, Lucius! I am your wife! The mother of your child! Your imprisonment affects me just as much as it affects you!"

"Narcissa, the Dark Lord blames _me_ for his failure at the Ministry. I am safer in Azkaban than I am at his mercy, for he has none."

"Surely you can hide," she pleaded. Her voice had resumed average volume, but the look upon her features screamed louder than she ever could. Lucius' face became contorted with rage at the constant questioning.

"I CANNOT HIDE!" he roared, pushing her off to the side and clearing the pathway to the door. He reached for the brass knob, but Narcissa reached out and grabbed his wrist after staggering for a moment.

"I'm not done," she hissed. "When we were married, you promised me that you would always be with me. You said that you would never have to go away and that you had ways to avoid prison. You told me you had ways to hide from Him. You promised me—"

"I am a Slytherin, Narcissa," he said with something reminiscent of an amused smirk on his face. "We do what suits our best interests."

"Bullshit," she snapped. "Tell me why, Lucius." She was fighting back tears at her betrayal.

"Not _now_," he growled, clenching his teeth.

"If not now then when?" she screamed. Her sorrow fell openly from her crystal clear eyes now. It seemed as though her fury had consumed her—all concern for Draco's sleep had disappeared from her mind and she forgot the meaning of volume control. "If not now then when?" When you're rotting away in a cozy little cell in Azkaban while the Dark Lord terrorizes _me_? You l-l-lied to me, Lucius, you _lied_—!"

"Stop it, Narcissa," he warned.

"You lied! My entire life with you has been a lie—everything! Everything!"

"Shut up, woman, I said SHUT UP! Draco is right up the stairs—"

"I d-don't care," she sobbed, still bellowing. "He is always your excuse. He is always why you say that we can't talk about our problems. I want to talk—to work things out. I want to grow as a couple Lucius, and how are we supposed to do that if you won't even tell me things? Lucius, please." She was weeping. "Lucius, I'm begging you. Talk to me. Stay with me. Let me in…."

He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders; Narcissa could tell that she would have deep purple bruises where the pads of his fingers dug into her skin in the morning. "I do not wish to speak with you about these matters at the moment, Narcissa. Oppose that if you would like, but remember who you are dealing with if you so choose."

"I know full well whom I am dealing with," she said seriously, her voice shaking. "I am dealing with my husband, and _I _am your wife. _I_ am the woman you promised to love and to cherish, and you have done neither, Lucius, you have done _neither_." He raised his hand to her cheek and Narcissa was sure the slap resonated throughout the manor. "You bastard," she said, giving him a look of utmost loathing.

"I warned you."

"You can hit me, but if you ever lay so much as one of your monstrous fingers on my son, I—I'll leave! I swear to the Dark Lord himself I will pack up Draco's bags and mine and I will take him and we will go far away from here, Lucius! We will abandon you and you will never find us. He will grow up without you, Lucius, and the only time I will ever look for your name is in a Daily Prophet article stating that Voldemort himself has killed you!"

"_Do not say the name!_"

"Afraid to hear your master's name? You despicable coward," she spat at him. She wasn't sure where her sudden surge of bravery had come from—she was usually a docile creature—but all she knew was that she would finally have her say in her marriage. Her marriage had been a lie, anyways. She looked at her husband and surged with newfound hatred.

"Be careful what you say, Narcissa," he said smoothly; he appeared to be unaffected by her insults. "Would you really like the last thing you tell me be what a coward I am?" A smirk played across his face; she was in the palm of his hand again. He had won his domestic war. The hostility melted from her face.

"What?"

"I will not see you again, Narcissa, after this night. This war will have claimed one of us before my sentence is through."

She stared at him in horror. "Lucius, that can't be true—" The tears came to her eyes again.

He looked at her without emotion, feeling…. or love. "Goodbye, Narcissa," he said quietly.

Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. It couldn't be goodbye… "Lucius, no!" she pleaded, her voice shaking again as she cried anew. "You don't have to go, Lucius, you can stay here, please! L-Lucius stay! Run away! Anything but l-leave! Please don't go to the Ministry, Lucius. Please. Please!"He reached for the doorknob and she grasped his wrist once again, but he shoved her so that her back collided with the wall before she fell to the floor. "LUCIUS!" He closed the door without looking for her. "LUCIUS!" She scrambled up and pulled the door open, but he had already disappeared. The cool night draft chilled her fragile body and she let out a wail as she shut the door one final time. She collapsed in a heap in the corner, her head in her hands. Her eyes were red and swollen and her nose was running just as much as they were. Her slight frame shook with every breath she drew in. "Come back…" she said quietly, knowing full well that he could not hear her.

She looked up mournfully and her vision caught something luminous in the darkness. Draco was sitting on the floor above, staring at her through the bars of the banister. He had eyes just like his father, eyes that he stared at her with. She couldn't decipher what he was thinking by the look on his face, and looked at him just long enough to see him give her a disapproving glare and walk away before bowing her head down again. She would send Draco back to Hogwarts in the morning, to finish out the term, and when he returned they would sojourn in her sister's home. In the end, it didn't really matter where they went, so long as she could escape Malfoy Manor.

At the moment, however, all she could think about was the way that Lucius had walked out the door and Draco had headed back to bed as though nothing had happened, leaving her alone in the foyer of a home she no longer wanted.

_**FIN.**_


End file.
